Fightinville Journal

I've reached the point that all the events of the past several days, no matter how grotesque or revolting fade into one long stream of coffee cups, pools of vomit, and misery.  Yesterday apropos of nothing Angel walked past me and asked if I could throw away a bag she was carrying that clearly contained human shit.  I merely glanced at the shit bag before hefting it into the trashcan.  We installed beehives on our lot down the street, both to have hives and to deter the drug users who tend to camp, shit, and use drugs on the lot.  While we were working on this a red truck pulled up and a man got out, walked about ten feet from the sidewalk and got ready to piss.  I was about twenty feet away, wearing a bee suit.  When I saw what he was doing, I yelled at him. He acted offended, and a buddy of his stepped in to mollify me.  After his friend and he apologized they went across the street to the homeless enclave to get drugs. 

I was talking to a young man recently who is part of the drug trade here.  I told him he should see if he could join the military and get out of town, make something of his life.  I ran into him at the library a few days ago with his mother, and he told me he had gotten a call from a recruiter. This morning I saw him walking and waved at him. He came over and we started talking in the middle of the street. So you're joining up, I asked.  Yeah, he said. You're going to have to quit smoking, I told him, and he agreed.  When I asked which service, he said he was actually applying to the police academy.  That's a good job, I said.  He agreed, and said his street friends would be astonished. Another longtime resident of the street rode up on his bicycle and touched the young man on the shoulder. The bike rider appears to be a mid-thirties black man with a pretty rough, street appearance. We've never exchanged words and rarely make eye contact, but sort of mainta...

 We had to have a woman arrested today, boarded up a house, and installed a basketball goal.  About a month ago, we found a woman camping on our lot down the street. We have learned we can't let this slide, or they'll be there more or less permanently.  We told her she had to leave. Her reaction was less common but again not entirely unknown to us: She launched into some legalese about how she had every right to be there and that she would be reporting us to the authorities. It wasn't really possible to have a rational discussion with her. We just settled for telling her she needed to move on. We asked her why she didn't go in the shelter, which she declined to discuss. We found out later she had a permanent ban. Day before yesterday, she was back, camping on the sidewalk down the street and talking nonstop.  Yesterday in the middle of the day, a different woman squatted behind a wagon on the sidewalk across the street from us, looking nervously in all directions. Wh...